Mosab Hassan Yousef

Mosab Hassan Yousef (مصعب حسن يوسف; born 5 May 1978), also called The Green Prince, is a Palestinian ex-militant who defected to Israel in 1997, thereafter working as an undercover agent for the Shin Bet until he moved to the United States in 2007.

His father is Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas.

The Shin Bet considered Yousef to be Israel's most valuable source within the Hamas leadership: the information he supplied allowed Israel to successfully thwart dozens of Palestinian suicide attacks and prevent the assassinations of many Israelis; exposed numerous Hamas cells; and assisted Israeli authorities in hunting down Palestinian militants.

His efforts also culminated in the incarceration of his father, who had served as a leading figure for Hamas operations from the West Bank.

Yousef said he saw the light after a stint in an Israeli jail during the mid-1990s.

At Megiddo Prison, he witnessed Hamas inmates leading a brutal year-long campaign to weed out supposed Israeli collaborators.

"During that time, Hamas tortured and killed hundreds of prisoners," he said, recalling vivid memories of needles being inserted under fingernails and bodies charred with burning plastics.

Many, if not all, had nothing to do with Israeli intelligence.

"I will never forget their screams," he continued.

"I started asking myself a question. What if Hamas succeeded in destroying Israel and building a state. Will they destroy our people in this way?"

Yousef said that his doubts about Islam and Hamas began forming when he realized Hamas' brutality, and that he hated how Hamas used the lives of suffering civilians and children to achieve its goals.

Yousef was held by Shin Bet agents in 1996.

While in prison he decided to accept a Shin Bet offer to become an informant.

Beginning with his release from prison in 1997, Yousef was considered the Shin Bet's most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname "The Green Prince" – using the color of the Islamist group's flag, and "prince" because of his pedigree as the son of one of the movement's founders.

The intelligence he supplied to Israel led to the exposure of many Hamas cells, as well as the prevention of dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts on Jews.

He has said that he did not inform for money, but rather that his motivations were ideological and religious, and that he only wanted to save lives.

In order to thwart any suspicions of collaboration, the Shin Bet staged an arrest attempt, telling the Israel Defense Forces to launch an operation to arrest him, and then provided him intelligence allowing him to escape at the last minute, after which he went into hiding for the rest of his career.

Yousef says he supplied intelligence only on the condition that the "targets" would not be killed, but arrested.

This led to the detention of several key Palestinian leaders, including Ibrahim Hamid, a Hamas commander in the West Bank, and Marwan Barghouti.

In 1999, Yousef converted to Christianity from Islam, but did not disclose this fact to the public until 2008, triggering fears that his family members in Ramallah would become targets for religious persecution.

Yousef met a British missionary in 1999 who introduced him to Christianity.

Between the years 1999 and 2000, Yousef gradually embraced Christianity.

Also, Yousef claims to have thwarted a 2001 plot to assassinate Shimon Peres, then foreign minister and later President of Israel.

According to his former Shin Bet officer, "Many people owe him their lives and don't even know it."

Former Shin Bet Deputy Chief Gideon Ezra said "there are hundreds of collaborators like him. He is not unusual. He just decided to write a book about it", though many other Israeli officials have also praised his work.

In 2005, he was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv by an unidentified Christian tourist.

In 2007, he left the West Bank and moved to the United States where he applied for political asylum and had his request granted by American authorities in 2010 following Shin Bet handler Gonen Ben Itzhak testifying on his behalf.

On 23 October 2023, Yousef stated that he holds United States citizenship while speaking to American journalist Jake Tapper on a televised interview; the statement was not disputed on air.

Mosab Hassan Yousef (later Joseph, also nicknamed "The Green Prince") was born in Ramallah, a city 10 km north of Jerusalem.

His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is a Hamas co-founder who spent many years in Israeli prisons.

He is the oldest of five brothers and three sisters.

When Yousef was growing up, he wanted to be a fighter because that was according to him what was expected of Palestinian children in the West Bank.

Yousef was first arrested when he was ten, during the First Intifada, for throwing rocks at Israeli settlers.

Additional arrests followed and he was jailed by Israel numerous times.

As his father's eldest son, he was seen as his heir apparent, and became an important part of the Hamas organization.

He left the West Bank for the United States in 2007, and lived some time in San Diego, California, where he joined the Barabbas Road Church.

In August 2008, Yousef publicly revealed his Christianity, and renounced Hamas and the Arab leadership, thereby endangering himself and exposing his family in Ramallah to persecution.

In March 2010, Yousef published his autobiography, titled Son of Hamas.

In May 2016, talking to a Jerusalem Post conference in New York, Yousef said that at one point, he was simultaneously working for and being paid by Israel, the United States, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas.

He went on to say that Islam as a whole is comparable to Nazism, and must be defeated.